How to Get Your Barcelona Practice Found by Google and AI Assistants

A newcomer who asks Google, ChatGPT or Perplexity for an English-speaking dentist, lawyer or physio in Barcelona is shown a short list, and a practice only reaches that list if its own website can be found, read and trusted. The good news from the platforms' own documentation is that there is no secret markup. The work is mostly basics, done carefully, and most of it is yours to control.

Do I need special markup or an AI file to be recommended?

Not for Google. Its guidance on AI features says there are no additional technical requirements to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode: the page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, and no new machine-readable files, AI-specific text files, markup or special schema.org structured data are needed. What Google does ask for is ordinary good practice:

• Allow crawling in robots.txt, and make sure any CDN or host allows it too
• Make content findable through internal links
• Keep important content as text, not only inside images or video
• Make structured data match the visible text on the page
• Keep your Business Profile information up to date, and verify the site in Search Console

Which AI crawlers should my robots.txt allow?

The assistants use separate bots for separate jobs, so you can allow the ones that put you in answers and decide about training separately. According to each company's own documentation:

• OpenAI: OAI-SearchBot decides whether you can appear in ChatGPT search answers, and OpenAI says sites opted out of it are not shown in them. GPTBot is for training, and disallowing it signals that your content should not be used for that. ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks, and OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to it.
• Anthropic: Claude-SearchBot indexes content for search results, and blocking it may reduce your visibility. Claude-User fetches pages for user questions, and ClaudeBot collects content that could contribute to training. Anthropic says its bots honour robots.txt and that rules are set per subdomain.
• Perplexity: PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in its results and, Perplexity says, is not used for foundation model training. It recommends allowing it in robots.txt. Perplexity-User acts for a user and generally ignores robots.txt.
• Google: Google points to Google-Extended for limiting use in training and grounding in its other systems, while snippet controls such as nosnippet and noindex govern what appears in Search.

OpenAI and Perplexity both say changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect. A blanket Disallow, or a hosting or security setting that blocks unknown bots, would also keep these crawlers out, so ask whoever built your site to check.

What should my pages actually say?

Say specific, checkable things, in the words your clients use. Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether a page offers original information and covers its topic in real depth, says that trust is the most important part of what it calls E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), and asks who created the content, how and why. Our recommendation, which goes beyond what the documents state, is to build one page per service you want to be known for, name the service as a newcomer would search for it in English, and state the languages you serve, your address, your hours and your price ranges where you can.

Research on generative engines points the same way. A paper by Aggarwal and colleagues, accepted to KDD 2024, found that content optimisation methods can raise visibility in generative engine answers by up to 40 per cent, with the effect varying by domain. It is a benchmark study, not a promise for any one site, but it is a reason to prefer concrete facts and named sources over slogans. For more on the audience you are writing for, see our guide on how to attract English-speaking clients in Barcelona.

Is structured data worth adding?

It helps machines read the basics, but it is not required for AI answers. Google's LocalBusiness documentation requires a name and an address, and recommends opening hours, geographic coordinates (at least five decimal places), a telephone number, a URL and a price range, with examples in JSON-LD inside a script tag. Schema.org defines LocalBusiness as a particular physical business or branch and includes address, opening hours, telephone and the area served. It also has a knowsLanguage property, but describes it as typically for a person, so say your languages in visible text first. Google limits rating and review properties to sites that collect reviews of other local businesses, so do not mark up praise about your own practice.

What must my website legally show in Spain?

Under Article 10 of Spain's e-commerce law (Ley 34/2002), a service provider must make certain details available permanently, easily, directly and free of charge. They include your name or company name, your residence or registered address, and an email address or other direct way to contact you. They also include your commercial register details where you are registered, any authorisation data your activity requires and your tax ID. For regulated professions, the law adds the professional college and membership number, the official title and where it was issued, and the professional rules that apply. Putting this on your website meets the obligation. It is also the plain "who is behind this" information Google's guidance tells site owners to make clear. This is information, not legal advice.

What should I avoid?

• Artificially changed dates and fake author profiles, which Google lists as signs of low-quality, search-engine-first content
• Mass-produced, near-identical pages for every neighbourhood and service
• Blocking crawlers by accident, through robots.txt, a plugin or a host setting
• Chasing files that nobody asked for: Google says none are needed, and none of the OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity documents we read asks for one

A ten-minute checklist

• Open your robots.txt and confirm it does not disallow OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Googlebot
• Check that your key services, languages, address and hours are written as text on your pages
• Make sure each service you want to be known for has its own page, and that the home page links to it
• Show your name, address, contact, tax ID and, if regulated, your college number
• Add LocalBusiness markup that matches the visible text, if you want it
• Verify the site in Search Console and look for crawling or indexing problems
• Keep your Google Business Profile up to date

A directory listing is one signal among these, not a substitute for them. Barcelona English Pros offers a free check of your own website on the For professionals page, which looks at several of the basics above, and we explain there how being listed fits in, including which placements are paid and labelled as such.

Curious how your own site measures up, and how a listing fits in? Start with the free website check, then decide what is worth doing: See how it works.